Whitman, the Hewlett Packard Enterprise CEO and former leader of eBay, appeared to have many of the right traits for the job: experience, maturity, a level head — the kind of qualities that Travis Kalanick, the Uber co-founder who stepped down as CEO in June, mostly lacked.Interviews with more than a dozen people close to the process, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the discussions are confidential, indicate that board members’ relationships have been damaged by leaks, shifting wildly as alliances are forged and then broken.Some board members are not convinced that Immelt is the right choice, given that GE’s stock price and profits have stagnated in recent years.[...] at an internal meeting with Uber employees last week, Liane Hornsey, the company’s senior vice president and head of human resources, said a top candidate was expected to be chosen within the next six weeks.On the other are many of the company’s other directors, including venture capitalist Matt Cohler and private equity investor David Trujillo, who represent Uber investors like Benchmark and TPG Capital.A founder of the Huffington Post who now runs a wellness company, Thrive Global, Huffington grew close to Kalanick since being appointed to the board last year, according to two people familiar with the board’s dynamics.Some company executives are concerned that Kalanick could use a SoftBank investment to dilute other shareholders’ stakes while he continues to buy stock back from employees in a bid to amass power.Masayoshi Son, the founder and chief executive of SoftBank, could provide Kalanick with a key ally, especially if Son seeks to appoint board members who favor Kalanick’s return as part of an investment.According to people with knowledge of the quarterly meeting Thursday, board members’ cell phones started buzzing during the evening with text messages regarding Whitman’s removing herself from consideration.Some board members appeared crestfallen that the person they viewed as the most attractive candidate had taken herself out of the running so publicly days before she planned to spend time with the few board members she had not yet met.By the end of the evening, they had agreed to a truce in hopes of avoiding another negative round of media coverage, according to the people familiar with the meeting.

Wells Fargo Chairman Stephen Sanger will probably step down before the company’s next shareholder meeting early next year as part of a shakeup of the board of directors, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter.Wells Fargo said last week that the board is reviewing its own “structure, composition and practices,” which will lead to actions that will be announced by the end of September.Calls for changes on the board intensified last month after the bank said 500,000 clients might have unwittingly paid for protection against vehicle loss or damage while making monthly loan payments, even though many drivers already had their own insurance policies.The disclosure follows a scandal last year in which the company acknowledged that it may have opened millions of unauthorized deposit and credit-card accounts.Ryan Graves told staff in an email Thursday that he will move out of his role as senior vice president of global operations in mid-September.Consumer Reports is pulling its recommendation of four Microsoft laptops after one of its surveys found that users were complaining about problems with the devices.The consumer advocacy group said Thursday that it can no longer recommend the company’s laptops or tablets because of poor reliability compared with other brands.Consumer Reports says Microsoft machines have performed well in laboratory testing.Consumer Reports last pulled laptop recommendations in 2015, when ratings were removed for two Hewlett-Packard laptops and one made by Lenovo.Two of the bigger institutional owners of single-family rentals in the United States are planning to merge, in the latest sign that affordable housing is becoming harder to find as home prices recover.Invitation Homes and Starwood Waypoint Homes announced a $4.3 billion stock deal Thursday.The deal comes nearly seven months after Invitation Homes, which owns about 50,000 properties, raised $1.5 billion in an initial public offering.Invitation Homes is majority-owned by the Blackstone Group, one of the first private equity firms to begin buying foreclosed homes in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, then fixing them up and renting them out.

PRESS RELEASE: ERP Power LLC (ERP), a leading provider of small, smart and connected LED drivers for the lighting industry, has signed a distribution agreement with Digi-Key Electronics, a global electronic components distributor. ...